You escape to the sand so hot it burns between your toes, but you just dig them deeper into the boiling warmth.  You escape to the sun that’s so bright and warm that it fries into your eyes and bakes into your skin, you sweat but you just stand still longer, drawing in the heat further as you throw your shirt to the ground.  You escape to the waves that are crashing so loudly you can’t even hear yourself think, and you wish you could take them with you, so you’d never have to think again.  

 

You escape just to escape like clockwork you only last a few days before you’re speeding down a winding road, disobeying every traffic law and not caring at all, heading towards sand and sun and waves and warmth that are all so filling and overwhelming and breathtaking that you wish you could just melt into those moments.  You never want to leave, but you know you always have to go back eventually, have to face the thoughts in your mind, and the pain in your chest.  You conveniently always leave your cell phone behind, but no one really tries to contact you or reach you anymore because they know you’ll just ignore them and disappear all over again; but most of all you think it’s because so far you’ve always come back in the end. 

 

There have been more than a few times, you’ve been traveling down the same road at break neck speed and you think about not pulling into the empty parking lot, not getting out and burying yourself into the heat of the sand, the warmth of the sun, the roar of the waves.  You think about speeding past and not stopping until you reach the ends of the earth, never to look back or think again.  You think in the car as you drive, because driving doesn’t take much thought anymore; you almost travel on autopilot these days and wonder what would happen if you just close your eyes.  You don’t think you have a death wish, you don’t think you really want your entire life to just end – but then you try not to think at all, and the urge to just close your eyes for a few seconds, to just try it, to just see what will happen boils higher and higher.  You don’t give in because you’ve gotten so good at stomping down on temptations, burying and suffocating urges and desires. 

 

So you still always end up whipping into that little parking lot, squealing tires and sometimes so last minute the car mirrors almost brush against the gate; but you always make it, without a scratch.  You stumble out of the car sometimes, other times you float out, other times you fall out, and sometimes you stay in the car but roll down the windows – just wanting to feel the breeze and hear the waves and smell the salt.  Sometimes you leave smelling like the ocean; fresh and salty and wild.  Sometimes you leave soaked in sweat and smelling like summer and sun.  Sometimes you leave with pink flesh and aching eyes.  But you always take something with you when you leave. 

 

Sometimes you cry with the waves, unafraid to sob and scream and yell, because they block out any noise you could possibly make.  Sometimes you crumble down upon bended knees, digging long fisted fingers into the heated sand and let it burn through the sensitive pads of your fingertips wishing they would catch on fire.  Sometimes you fall into the shallow edges of the water, letting it soak into every inch of your clothing, washing away all the pain and aches and worries carrying them away out to sea as you step back onto solid ground.  Sometimes you mumble your pleas to the darkening sky, when you’ve over stayed your welcome and the waves start a quiet soothing melody.  Sometimes the thoughts break through and you breakdown; throwing a tantrum so wild that you leave with self induced bruises and scrapes and your hair is so wild that you can’t even attempt to tame it; so you start to leave a hat in your car and always bring a jacket along. 

 

There are times when you want to lay down with the setting sun, watching as it disappears beneath the calming surface and you don’t ever want to move again.  You want to lay there and forget the world as it burns you alive.  You want to erase all your thoughts and memories and feelings because those are the biggest of all your issues – all those feelings that you can’t run far or fast enough from.  They bubble to the surface sometimes, even in this place that allows no thinking, because you don’t think – you just feel.  And when you feel things fall into place and they make sense, but the moment you turn your brain back on all the pieces shatter once again and you only cry harder. 

 

You lay your secret tears upon the sands here, you whisper your darkest secrets and your deepest wishes, you tell of your wildest fantasies and your secret desires, you bury your intelligence and wisdom at the edge of the sand and throw your caution into the wild waves of the sea.  But the moment you fall back into the deep leather seats, all the intelligence, all the wisdom, all the caution, all the fear, all the responsibility; it finds its way back so instantly you double over – and no matter how many times you’ve been through it, the pain only gets worse and worse and nothing gets easier to deal with.  

 

When you leave you don’t speed back, you don’t marvel at the squeal of tires or the breaking of laws.  You don’t leave the windows down, the wind whipping through your tousled hair.  The windows are tightly closed, the once booming music is nothing but still silence, you barely travel over the road at a crawling speed wishing you prolong even a second longer from reaching your next destination.  You try to keep the thoughts at bay as you work to push back emotion and feeling and draw forth all the intelligence you know you possess.  You don’t try to run from the memories, but you don’t allow them to play over and over again in your mind that is for later, tucked deeply beneath heavy covers where you pull out all the thoughts and memories and allow them to play like a movie until you’re too exhausted to keep your eyes open another minute. 

 

You pull into the packed parking lot, rows and rows of cars; some you know, some you’ve been in, some you’ve never seen before, and none of them you really care about.  You sit in your parked car for a while, still attempting to prolong your return, still fighting back the temptation to run, to flee, to just escape for good and never look back.  You eventually make your way back to a plain white door, that is less than welcoming and slightly threatening, you force a shaky hand to calm as you jam a well used key into the lock, cursing as you trip over a mountain of shoes but closing the door as silently as you can.  You slip through the apartment, easily avoiding all the places with noises or voices, finding your way through a dark hallway and slipping out onto the balcony.  You watch the stars then; wondering vaguely if you should take up smoking just because you can, just for another excuse to escape.  But you are still too concerned about health and sickness and dying to pick up the habit; though you figure second hand smoke will kill you just as quickly if it’s going to, but you’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding that these days just like everything else you’ve begun to avoid – like group dinners, and breakfast, and drinking night, and game night, and chores that involve more than one person.  You’ve pretty much just gotten good at avoidance in general; phone calls unanswered, text messages unread, emails deleted.  

 

You slump against the wall, sliding to the ground and staring at the stars, staring at the pitch black sky, staring at nothing at all.  You wish sometimes the universe would swallow you whole, you wonder how much more you can take of all the hiding, and secrets, and avoidance, and deep set loneliness that is eating away at you so swiftly you’re craving for contact these days.  You bite back a scream that wants to rip through your throat, but dies instead, tangled and ripping up your chest as you lean forward blocking all the stars from sight. 

 

You hear the balcony door slide open, and the sound seems too loud in the silence that you want to cover your ears as it slides shut.  You can feel the warmth of a presence at your side, cracking joints as the person takes a seat against the cold ground beside you.  There’s a flickering of heat, and then smoke surrounds you as it blows into the sky.  You want to force a cough, just to be immature, just to annoy the person beside you, just to be an ; but you just tilt your head away instead, keeping silent, avoiding like usual. 

 

“You know,” the deep voice rumbles, and you feel the vibrations through your elbow that’s pressed against a bony rib.  “You’re going to have to let it all out one of these days.  And I don’t mean to where ever it is you disappear to.”  You scoff, because he’s trying to play like he hasn’t followed you before, hasn’t watched you like a hawk as you fell into crashing waves, lost your voice around aching screams.  He knows where you go, and he also knows that you know he knows… And you also know that he’ll never tell anyone else, and that is why you let him continue to pretend like you don’t know anything at all about his soft-heart that is quite obvious to everyone.  And he also knows of your pain, and that is why he’ll never tell anyone your true reason for slipping away; that it isn’t the stress of long hours in the dance studio, or the strain of endless vocal recordings, it isn’t even the annoying presence of management, or the iron fist of the company.  

 

You both know exactly what it is you scream into the waves, and cry into the sand, and wish to melt away into the heat of the sun.  It’s because of love, and self-hatred, and bitterness, and heartache – you figure he probably knows your pain better than anyone else, and that is why you let him get away with so much more than you usually would.  You hold your tongue and bite your lip and turn a blind eye to a lot of things, and words, and teases.  You don’t want to talk to him, and he probably knows that but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to back down tonight.  You wonder where he found his backbone, and why it took him so long to locate it.

 

“I’m dead serious,” he murmurs, words slurring around the second cancer stick in his mouth as the light flickers again.  He’s a chain smoker, an emotional smoker, a bored smoker, a thought provoked smoker – he’s a smoker that’s probably going to die because his lungs are going to just stop working before his 40th birthday.  He coughs for a moment, the sound is wet and you grimace leaning further away from him.  “You’re going to let the feelings win.” 

 

“I am not,” you answer harshly, face burning with rage and annoyance and frustration because you know he’s doing this on purpose, he’s pushing your buttons like only he knows how. 

 

“You are,” he shrugs then, and the rage builds higher.  “You are trying to pick a fight with emotions; with love.  And you are going to lose.  You are going to fall right on that smug face you wear around like nothing can touch you.  You are going to fall right over that cliff, and you are going to forget how to swim the moment you touch the raging water, and you are going to drown in it all.  And me.” You can just imagine the look on his face now, and you’re seething with so much anger even though you know he’s just trying to pull reactions from you.  But regardless you can’t control yourself, not tonight, not right now, not with the silence of the city and the darkness of the night and the smell of cinnamon apple that is lingering under the smoke and sun in the air.  “I’m just going to laugh.” 

 

You turn then, angry as vicious words spill from your lips, words that are meant to do damage; words meant to hurt him and rip at him and break him.  They continue to spill and stumble and fall from your mouth but his eyes remain blank and tear free as if he’d prepared himself for this, and maybe he had but that doesn’t stop the words or the anger or the hate that is bubbling far too close to the surface for comfort.  You want to punch him then, and that thought doesn’t go unchecked because suddenly your fist is flying into his face as his head whips backwards and he curses colorfully.  

 

There is a lot of scrambling and other voices and yelling so loud that it beats against your skull.  And you can’t think and you can’t breathe and you can’t feel and you are spinning in circles as colors dance before your eyes.  And you want to apologize because you don’t hate him, and you don’t wish he’d just die, and you don’t want him to go away, and you don’t think he’s talentless, and you don’t think that Jaejoong will never love him back, and so many other things you’d said but never really meant.  But you can’t see straight anymore, and there are more voices, other voices, someone’s fist collides roughly with the side of your head and you stumble backwards tripping over a chair and banging your head against something solid.  Your vision swims for a minute, and then suddenly you’re surrounded by smoke yet again and skinny arms and bony ribs are pressed against yours. 

 

“It’s okay,” his deep voice is close to your ear as you inhale more of the smoke that is still surrounding him.  Only then do you realizing that you’re crying and sobbing, clawing at his back like some child that’s just lost everything in their life.  And you can see Jaejoong and Yunho and Junsu standing a step or two away with looks of confusion and anger and awe and so many other things rushing across their faces.  You notice that Jaejoong is rubbing at his hand and figure it was him that punched you, you start to mumble out half sobbed broken up apologies into a pale neck and he just coos into your hair and pats your back.